Because they are just like us

Yes, they understood Gen. Musharraf’s inability to outline a script for peace, but where, pray were the great people of Pakistan by whom I place such store? When will they ever stand up against the intolerant society that is shaping up around them?

This observation cannot be dismissed lightly either.

A great cricketer tells me the following story. During a test match in Pakistan, two girls in their early teens, entered the players’ pavilion seeking autographs of the Pakistani cricketers. In the same row as the Pakistanis were some Indian cricketers. When one of the girls approached an Indian cricketer for an autograph, the other stopped her in a sort of audible whisper. "Don’t" she whispered. "He is a Hindu".

I have told the other story several times but it bears repetition. Among the press corps that accompanied Atal Behari Vajpayee to Pakistan in 1979, (he was then the foreign minister in the Janata government) were K.K. Katyal, M.L. Kotru, Raghu Rai and myself. During our halt at Karachi, I suggested to my colleagues that we visit one of my cousins. This would give them a flavour of the divided Indian family.

The rapturous reception caused all the friends to contemplate the experience with misty eye. Then something extraordinary happened. My niece, not quite twelve, took me aside and asked "Are they Hindus, these friends accompanying you?" Somewhat startled, I said "Yes, but why do you ask?" My niece shook her head with disbelief "But they look just like you." The point is straightforward. My niece had clearly been exposed to peer groups raised on dollops of anti Hindu propaganda — the sort of rubbish Al Hilal, the Pak Army’s organ, puts out every week.

My friends who are beginning to introduce into their appraisal of the "people of Pakistan" a wide margin of scepticism see the likes of my niece as a pointer towards an intolerant state. My niece was 12 years old in 1979; she is 34 today. Since the jehad against the Soviets started at about the same time, it follows that a sizeable body of people, ranging in ages from 30 to 60, have come under the spell of Pak Jamaat-e-Islami’s hate campaign.

My argument is that, in the absence of the people’s participation, the 16 odd militant groups, under the umbrella of the United Jehad Council, held together by the Jamaat and the ISI, will only gain in influence and power. With every passing day, it is not Gen. Musharraf who is tightening his grip on the affairs of the state but it is the militant clerics who will expand their base and tighten the noose around Gen. Musharraf’s neck up to the point where he can inhale and exhale only at their will.

But, my friends continue, we have seen so-called popular Governments led by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Al Hilal wrote then what it writes today. Where is the difference? This is where the discussion gets bogged down in the absence of any empiricism. How should I know with any certainty how a majority of Pakistani people are disposed towards India?

Yes, if I could drive around Lahore, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Quetta, Bhawalpur, Hyderabad, Karachi, my eye, trained in journalism, would arrive at some reasonable assessment of the popular Pakistani mood as distinct from the concentric circles of militants who surround Gen. Musharraf. In India we have pollsters who can give us some idea of how the people feel about an issue. Is it absurd to contemplate some pollster gauging Pakistani public opinion? But in brief, it would be self-defeating to allow pessimism to take hold of us regarding the inclinations of the Pakistani people.

We do have some encouraging evidence. After all, the Jamat-e-Islami has been roundly trounced in every popular election. Surely that is an encouraging detail. Also did not Nawaz Sharif embark however gingerly, on the Lahore process which, unfortunately, precipitated his fall?

And did not poets like Farigh Bukhari spend their lives in exile writing:

òf40ó"Ab to yun lagta hai Farigh/Ki ayazan billah!/Jaise Islam Yazidon ke liye/Aya ho!" (Forgive me, oh God, for entertaining this thought, But the faith I see around me makes me feel that Islam was revealed for Yazid, who martyred the family of Prophet Mohammed)

On the people of Pakistan, I like to see the glass as being half full.